


nobody knows how many stars there are in space

by marinersapptcomplex



Category: Big Mouth (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Moving On, POV Second Person, References to Depression, i love them, its gay as heck, nick kroll is a coward for not making them get together right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 18:23:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17854781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marinersapptcomplex/pseuds/marinersapptcomplex
Summary: How he makes you feel human and real.





	nobody knows how many stars there are in space

**Author's Note:**

> i know.... i am just as shocked as you that i wrote fanfiction about big mouth.... no further questions ur honor

You are thirteen and on fire in the school gymnasium with Jay’s tongue in your mouth and his hand on your arm. The world is burning up up up and so is everyone else but the two of you, but you like it, you like it so much you could scream. 

 

There are hickies on his neck when you’re standing outside. He’s not looking at you. 

 

Mom picks you up after the fire in the gymnasium, and she’s blasting the radio from the car, she’s looking at you and Jay, she’s smiling.  _ She knows she knows she knows.  _ Then she asks Jay if he wants a ride home.

 

In the car, Jay looks at you. “Thanks.” He says. 

 

You want to say it back but you can’t. His face, it’s soft, too soft. Jay’s looking at you like you’re extinct. Maybe you are. You want to say thank you back but you can’t. Jay gets out the car, and leaves. 

 

“He seems like a nice boy.” Mom’s voice drifting in and out like the sound of wind chimes. 

 

The moon through the dirty window of the car looks like a silver peach pit. And, the stars, the glittering, gleaming stars are looking down on you with their ethereal, expressionless faces. 

 

Nobody knows how many stars there are in space. 

 

\----

 

\--

 

-

 

You are fourteen and scared. Jay’s bedroom is a scary place, it’s crooked and damp and so unfamiliar, feels so unloved. Jay is asleep, and snoring, curled up in foetal position, whispering words with no meaning. 

 

The floor seems to be swallowing you whole. You don’t know why you’re here. The past, to you, is a blurry window pane. If you could reach out and touch, just remember, make sense of what’s really happening. 

 

“Dude, are you okay?” Jay’s voice sounds comforting in the darkness. 

 

At first, no words come out. Then, slowly, you sit up from the carpeted floor and look at him. Jay looks back from his bed, sleep drowns his eyes. There is a warmth and certain brightness in him. 

 

“Maybe,” the words feel gooey in your mouth. “I’m not sure.”

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“Do you ever get scared?”

 

Something sad and heavy hangs above the both of you. A sense of fear, clouded by longing. 

 

“Of what?”

 

You sigh, quiet as possible. “Doesn’t matter what, just answer my question.”

 

Your chest is uncomfortably tight and your mouth tastes stale. But Jay, stupid, unbreakable and blind Jay, doesn’t look at you with pity. No, he stares at you like he wants to. Like he needs to. 

 

“Yeah, of course I get fucking scared.” Jay looks away for a second, he rubs his eyes. “All the time.”

 

“Sometimes I feel like I’m going to be alone forever.” 

 

The world is dark, wet. Winter has turned your hands into horrible, cracked dry instruments of pain. They weep with blood. You let them. You like the sting. 

 

“Sometimes I feel like that too.” Jay says back. 

 

Often, you wonder what that kiss in seventh grade represented. Jay stares at you like he’s waiting for an answer but you wouldn’t know how to give him one even if you could. If the world would shatter now - break off into a million silent pieces, you would let it. 

 

Jay shuffles forward in his bed, Star Wars blanket wrapped tight around his body as he extends a long, skinny tan arm out and lets it drape loosely against the side of the bed. 

 

You don’t flinch when he takes your hand. 

 

\----

 

\--

 

-

 

You are fifteen and laughing. Jessi has her mouth round a Coke bottle, smiling, sun in her eyes. This is something you know: happiness. And it feels almost new. 

 

Missy has her head in Andrew’s lap, giggling to herself, braces glinting silver in the light. Nick is lying in the grass, asleep.  Jay is looking at you.

 

There is something slightly too happy about this. Like the calm before the storm. The good before the bad in a horror movie. 

 

Everyone leaves to go home and eat dinner. You and Jay stay behind. The traffic starts to lull you to sleep and all you can do to stay awake is stare at the sky, swollen with colour. 

 

“Look,” you say, smiling, pointing up at the pink sky. “The world’s ending.”

 

“Yeah,” Jay lies down next to you and traces the clouds with his finger. “I thought I’d be with you for the end of the world.”

 

You laugh, kind-of have to. “I’d count on you for survival.”

 

“Makes sense.”

 

When he looks at you all you can see is smoke. Once, you are sure, his heart was snagged on yours. Once, in some temporary time, you both lived in the land of milk and honey. Once, you both lived in oblivion. Or perhaps you still do. 

 

If the world really is burning, then you are fine. If the world really is on fire, you are glad to be with him. If the world is ending, you will not be scared. You will take his hand and say,  _ don’t be afraid. I’m with you. I’m always with you.  _

 

\----

 

\--

 

-

 

You are sixteen and hiding in the boys toilets. There is blood on your face, and it’s dripping down your chin and ruining your brand new shirt that you begged your mom to buy. And now it’s ruined, like all the good things in your life. 

 

You feel like mould. Nose bleeding, red pulp, staining your mouth. You taste blood. You’re not hungry for it. You’ve never been hungry for it, not really. 

 

“What happened?” 

 

You don’t notice Jay sneaking out of a cubicle and staring back at you. Too distracted. Too sad. You wish you could pinpoint what’s wrong with you but you can’t. 

 

“I don’t know,” you say. “I was in Psych and my nose just started-”

 

Jay disappears back into the cubicle for a second, then reappears with a wad of crinkled toilet paper. He walks over to you, a little hesitant, as if scared to approach, waiting for some kind-of approval from you. 

 

“Put your head back,” he tilts your chin, stuffs the tissue up your nose and it hurts. It really fucking hurts. “Hold the tissue there.”

 

You’re surprised you’re not crying. 

 

“Matthew,” he says, a little persistent. “Hold the tissue.”

 

“Sorry,” you lift your hand to the bridge of your nose, pressing down hard on the red-drenched tissue. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Stop apologising,” Jay goes to wash his hands. Your blood is on his fingers. He’s not even bothered, you want him to be though. “I don’t mind, really.”

 

In this bathroom, the stench of urine and stale blunts. Mid-July heat slick and heavy, beating down on the back of your neck. Jay looks like he wants to cry, you think maybe you should ask why. 

 

“There’s something wrong with you too.” You look at Jay, expecting his head to turn, but it doesn’t. He seems scared. “Don’t tell me your brothers are feeding you those gross fucking cracker things again.”

 

Jay laughs, a little too hard. His eyebrows crease like folded paper. His face, brimstone. 

 

“No…” He leans against the sink, closes his eyes for a moment, as if already tired. “My old man has cancer.”

 

“Fuck,” you let go of the tissue. “I’m sorry.”

 

When you used to look at Jay, tanned and angry and covered in dirt, you thought he was brimming full of dark possibility. He was the testament of your childhood, and in some ways you were certain he never quite let go of the past. When you look at Jay now, red-eyed and small and hurt, you think he is lost. He is searching for a light in the dark. 

 

“Please, don’t be.” Jay has to turn away, and he’s crying. His mouth is trembling so horribly. “I don’t want anymore fucking pity. I can’t fuckin’ stand it.”

 

“I won’t pity you. I haven’t ever pitied you.” 

 

“Thanks, I guess.” He’s wiping away snot with the back of his hand, but you’re not as disgusted as usual. “Thanks for being my friend.”

 

You watch him sigh and sniff and stutter and suddenly you’re moving, toward him, heart in your mouth, all crooked and scared. Your arms are pale, so stickly, wrapping tight around his shoulders. At first, Jay does nothing, he just stands still, wordless. 

 

Then, Jay’s arms reach back, his arms feel jagged and warm against the small of your back. 

 

How he makes you feel human and real. How the darkness ebbs away and the stars show their faces when he’s around. Feels like he takes all the darkness and swallows it whole. Feels like he’s the medicine you’ve been waiting for. 

 

How happy you are with him sweating against you. 

 

Jay holds you tighter, cries louder. Your face, buried in the crook of his neck, still smelling of dirt.

 

Your nose drips blood down the front of his shirt, but Jay says nothing. The next day, he comes to school in the same shirt, wears your bloody stain like a medal. 

 

\----

 

\--

 

-

 

You are seventeen and kissing a stranger. Licking him clean in the crawl space of this party. His name isn’t memorable, his face is a blur, already. 

 

Outside the liquor store, later. Your hands to the sky and feet planted so firm on the ground.  _ You are alive you are alive you are alive.  _ Jessi is chasing you, reaching out for your arms, trying to clip your wings.  _ Like a moth _ , you think,  _ I live life like a moth. I always have. _

 

The moon is rising, always rising, calling your name. She is slick and glistening, as if straight from a bath. She is looking at you as if you are her child. You are beautiful. You are happy. And this feels like living. 

 

Jay, from the liquor store, watching you and laughing with a warm forty in his hands. His face, aged by neglect and yet somehow younger than you. How you have always loved him. How you always will. 

 

Oh, Jay. 

 

You run to him like you’ve always wanted to, and he takes you by your hands, still laughing. If there is any love left inside you, you will gladly give it all to him.  _ To die by your side… Would be such a heavenly way to die…  _

 

Close, you are so close. The closest. Reminds you of seventh grade all over again. 

 

So you kiss him, hard, teeth sharp against his lips. And Jay kisses you back, sloppy and warm, like his cheap forty. He is different than the stranger. He is familiar. He is home. 

 

Loving Jay will kill you one day. You think maybe it already has. But you don’t mind. 

 

\----

 

\--

 

-

 

You are eighteen and leaving. You don’t really know what Jay wants from you when he calls you up, spouting some bullshit about the ‘old days.’ It’s two days before you’re supposed to move. You wonder if he knows that. 

 

He comes into your room all wide-eyed and smiling, holding a CD case in his left hand. It doesn’t have a cover, just a blank CD, shining back at you. 

 

“I don’t have a CD player.” You say, and kick a few empty boxes out the way so you can sit down on the floor. 

 

Jay’s face seems to sink in on itself for a moment, his hand tenses around the case, he stares down at the floor. Silent. The sun pools on his face like honey. 

 

“Just play it through my Spotify, or something.” You hand him your phone, grazing his hand with yours lightly. “If it’s so important.”

 

His face lights up with the light from your phone-screen, and you catch a scar on his skin you’ve never seen before.  _ Funny _ , you think,  _ all that time spent loving you, and I never even noticed.  _

 

The songs starts out. The sun sits low behind your window pane. And Jay sits down next to you on the floor, knees tucked under his chin, looking like a little kid. He’s trying not to look at you. 

 

You feel angry and sad for no reason all of a sudden. You feel like kicking Jay out and not giving a shit. You feel so many stupid things. 

 

Jay is so close, so close that you can feel the warmth and the kool-aid from his breath. You aren’t grossed out. This, this strange interaction is a comfort to you. It reminds you of all the times you’ve been with him before. It reminds you of the time in seventh grade, before the kissing and all the stupid shit, where Jay death-dropped on Nick’s carpet floor and had to ice his crotch for the whole night. 

 

It reminds you of good stuff. 

 

“You like it?” He seems to be looking right through, as if he already knows, knows you inside and out. Maybe he does. 

 

“Yeah,” your mouth is dry with apprehension. “I think I do.”

 

The song is still going. Feels like it might play forever. And, what does he want from you? What did he come here to do, to say? 

 

“Are you really leaving, then?” He says, looking at you. “Like, for real?”

 

“For real.” 

 

“Oh.” Jay slumps against the wall next to you, sighs, bites his lip. You can’t tell what either of you are feeling right now. It’s a strange sort of smudge in your brain. 

 

The sun disappears, the moon comes up, and the stars with it. So bright, their same expressionless faces, their exceptional light and beauty. If only you were a star. If only life were that easy. 

 

Before the song is over, his lips are on your cheek, pressing wet and hot against your skin. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and neither do you. You will never know what you’re doing. 

 

He isn’t your first. He isn’t your anything. 

 

He kisses you on the mouth and scratches the back of your neck with his nails and before you can do anything back, your dad is calling up to you from downstairs. He says there’s a phone call for Jay, and you watch heart-broken and kiddish as he leaves (for what feels like the hundredth time) to go for the phone. 

 

_ You are leaving. You are over this. You are packing up and moving on from boys with problems you can’t fix. You are leaving. You are already gone.  _

 

Jay comes back up the stairs, and says, “I need to go.”

 

He comes back in your room and stops the song and looks at you again. He is searching for something. But you don’t know what. 

 

“I’ll miss you,” he says. “Try not to forget about me.”

 

Your heart hurts. Really hurts. 

 

“I won’t.” You say and meet Jay’s gaze. His eyes are wet and red and scared. 

 

You want to say it again, but he’s already out the door and down the street. 

 

_ I won’t,  _ you would’ve said.  _ I don’t think I could even if I tried.  _

 

So, you leave. And you don’t look back. And you don’t forget Jay.

  
  
  
  



End file.
